by Michael Wakelin.
‘I am the Lord’s servant’, Mary answered. ‘May your word to me be fulfilled’.
(Luke 1:38)
There can be few texts whose interpretation has changed more in the past 50 years than this! It is not a statement of pious, compliance but rather a radical ‘yes’ to being part of God’s work of salvation.
Among the problems the Church faces in getting its message across are the numerous examples of where we mess up, and the common misunderstanding of what we are about. And we only have ourselves to blame. Being a Christian is less about being perfect or having everything sorted, and more about recognising the call to be changed and to trust the God who keeps looking for us when we get lost.
‘I wish to begin again on a daily basis. To be born again every day is something that I try to do. And I’m deadly serious about that’. (Bono)
‘When I say, “I’m a Christian,” I’m not shouting, “I’m saved!” I’m whispering, “I get lost”. That is why I chose this way’. (Maya Angelou).
The 2021 census showed how the religious landscape has changed in the UK. It is richer and more diverse, and while many profess no religion, over half still believe in God and practise some kind of faith. They just do not align to a particular religion.
But with this diversity has come another challenge to the Church – the secular world is stealing our values and priorities and communicating them better than we are! The time has come to recognise allies, and the Church should divest itself of its religious garb and sanctify and embrace the new expressions of faith and spirituality that are shining like a rich kaleidoscope of colour all around us.
John Hull spoke of us having moved away from Christendom to embracing Christlikeness, which suggests that our message and our methods should mirror his. We must preach the real Jesus, and show that we are hungry and thirsty for justice and righteousness, devoted to ending slavery and oppression, however it manifests itself.
This will involve shouting truth to power, standing alongside the single parent with no support and campaigning to fight the ludicrous inequalities that enable food banks to exist and giving a second chance to those that have messed up and made bad choices. It means reducing our own materialism, and saving the planet by our environmental choices, taking the lead with other faith groups in our stewardship of God’s creation.
What we must say is that the world as it is, is not as God intends it to be, and that the words and actions of Jesus contain the clues to how a transformation might begin.
For reflection:
Who are your allies amongst the newer expressions of spirituality? How are you working together?
A Remnant Church doesn’t sit well with a model of Christendom, but the trappings remain. How might we better embrace Christlikeness?
Susanna Wesley said there are two things to do about the gospel. Believe it and behave it. How might one better reflect the other?
This year’s SPECTRUM Conference, What role for the Remnant Church? was held at Swanwick in mid-May and was led by Michael Wakelin and Elaine Lindridge, two speakers who have both written publicly of their growing conviction that some long-held beliefs and practices of Christians and the churches are in urgent need of close scrutiny and critique. Articles are in the form of discussion papers based on their session notes, with editing by Keith Albans – we are sharing them periodically on Theology Everywhere. Also see Time for a New Reformation and Reimagining Faith.
Theology Everywhere 
I have much enjoyed the last three T.E. contributions. Much of my energy, both as a radio producer and presenter and later as the Local Radio Officer for Methodism, went into encouraging peop
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Sent from my iPad
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‘the secular world is stealing our values
and priorities ….’ ???? Unbelievable!
Are they robbing you of the right to ‘bring God’s love’ to the poor and needy?
Are they stealing your glory?
Are they denying you a sense of self-satisfaction for all your good works?
Has it just dawned on you that actually Christians did not invent kindness and compassion, nor do they have a monopoly on it?
Hallelujah! Maybe now you will accept that the Christian faith is not all about what we do for God; it is all about what God did for us!
‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.’ John 3:16
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Last week, when I went to a football match, two Christians were standing outside shouting “I’m saved, and you need to be saved too, or you are headed to Hell.” They were convinced that this was what God wanted them to say to the world. In a meeting I attended a few days ago, the Methodist minister chairing the meeting asserted that the whole point of the church is to save souls. There are groups whose focus is a revival, while other groups are looking forward to the imminent return of Jesus in glory. The set readings for this coming Sunday are about the second coming. Most of the hymns and choruses that are sung in church fit in with this kind of Christian thinking. Giving intellectual assent to a fourth century creed is a requirement for membership in many churches. This is all expressed in a church language which the large majority in Western Europe can no longer relate to.
Scientists have made such tremendous progress, because they stand on the shoulders of the scientific giants of previous generations and are able to see further than their predecessors could see. Questioning and challenging are an integral part of being a scientist. No-one would think of saying, “Isaac Newton said this so it must be right.” In contrast, the church frowns on questions. The Methodist church is hamstrung by the doctrinal standards agreed in 1932, while the Anglican church still has to adhere to the 39 articles laid down in 1563. God still speaks to us, but it seems that what he said 2,000 or 3,000 years ago carries far more weight than what he is saying today.
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Three thousand years ago the Word of God was written in stone. Two thousand years ago, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Yes, God still speaks to us today; he speaks into the heart of every individual who is in relationship with his Son. Heart speaks unto heart, Spirit unto spirit.
The problem with encouraging questions is that everyone comes up with different answers, and everyone thinks theirs is the right answer. Questions lead to opinions, which lead to debate, disharmony and disunity. Everyone wants to be a theologian, and everyone wants to be a prophet.
Far better surely to accept that The Church (whichever denomination you belong to) holds certain creeds and doctrines which they adhere to; this is the foundation and the bedrock of our faith. It doesn’t mean that every individual who belongs to that church has to agree with every word and sentence of those creeds and doctrines. There is room for doubt and personal opinions, while still accepting the authority of The Church. Catholics have always been an accepting church. Other denominations seem to struggle with it.
But what is the alternative? Without the authority of The Church, the Christian faith becomes no more than a bunch of nice people doing good works in the community. It all sounds very bland, egoistic, and self-congratulating to me. Not something I would want to be part of.
‘Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee.’
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We should perhaps remember that the priest and the Levite were the ones who followed the rules and the authority of the religious tradition laid down 3,000 years ago. The Samaritan was the unorthodox one who helped the one in need. Jesus didn’t disparage the act of helping or suggest that it was ‘self-congratulatory’, he commended it and said, “Go and do likewise.”
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You might want to consider the Venerable Bede’s interpretation of the parable of the Good Samaritan:
The man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho,” says St. Bede, “is Adam representing the human race. Jerusalem is the city of heavenly peace, of that happiness from which he has been separated by sin. The robbers are the devil and his angels, into whose hands Adam fell, because he went down. They stripped him and robbed him of the glory of immortality and the robe of innocence. The injuries they inflicted upon him are sins which, violating the integrity of human nature, let death in through half open wounds. They left him half dead because they deprived him of the blessedness of eternal life, although they could not abolish in him the faculty of reason by which he knew God. The priest and the Levite who saw the wounded man and passed by denote the priests and ministers of the Old Testament who could only show up the wounds of the sick world by the decrees of the law, but could not cure them because, as the apostle says, it was impossible for them to wash away sin with the blood of calves and lambs.
The good Samaritan (the word means guardian) is our Lord Himself. Having become man He is brought close to us by the great compassion He has shown towards us. The inn is the Church into which our Lord Himself brings man, as the good Samaritan brought in the wounded man on his beast, for no one can take part in the Church unless he is baptized, united to the Body of Christ, and carried like the lost sheep on the shoulders of the Good Shepherd.
The two pence are the two Testaments bearing the name and image of the eternal King. Christ is the fulfilment of the Law. The two coins were given the next day to the innkeeper, because on the morrow of His resurrection, our Lord opened the eyes of the two disciples of Emmaus and of His apostles, that they might understand the Holy Scriptures. For on that next day the innkeeper received the two pence as a reward for his care of the wounded man, because the Holy Ghost descending upon the Church, taught the apostles all truth, that they in their turn, might be able to teach all nations and preach the Gospel.”
The whole point of the church is to save souls!
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Sadly, Christian church history has far too many examples of leaders within the church misusing and abusing church authority. There is a long history of the powerful using selected biblical texts and dogmatic statements to dominate the powerless, to repress minorities, and to exclude those who are different in some way. We have seen the excommunication, imprisonment, torture and burning of dissenters, homosexuals, witches, of scientists whose theories clashed with a literal reading of the Old Testament, and even of those who first made the Bible available in English.
Martin Luther paved the way for the Holocaust by advocating that synagogues and Jewish schools and homes be set on fire, and Jews’ property and money confiscated. He declared that the Jews should be shown no mercy or kindness, afforded no legal protection, and should be drafted into forced labour camps or expelled from the country. He also wrote, “We are at fault in not slaying them”.
The Southern Baptist Union, the very heart of the Bible Belt in the U.S.A., broke away originally from the northern church specifically to fight for “the very evident truth in the Bible” that God had ordained slavery. The Reformed Church in South Africa played a significant role in providing a theological backing for Apartheid based on scriptural texts which they interpreted as demanding the separation of races.
In more modern times we’ve seen how the Catholic hierarchy used its authority to cover up sex abuse allegations and other abuses such as the treatment of unmarried mothers in Ireland.
If we simply accept doctrines that are handed down to us, we have an inherited, second-hand faith. It is only when we ask questions and adapt our thinking to accommodate our own experience and modern discoveries that it becomes a personal faith. For centuries, people were happy to accept that the church knows best, and that is still the case in some countries, but in Western Europe that is increasingly not the case.
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Jesus tells the parable to illustrate the command, “Love your neighbour as yourself.” You can spin all kinds of fanciful interpretations (I think it was Augustine who came up with this one first) but these are all attempts to get away from the clear command. You either try to obey the command as best as fallible humans can or you ignore it with whatever excuse you can come up with.
It is interesting that, on Catholic websites, one of the criticisms of Protestant Evangelicalism is the Evangelical dismissal of “faith by works” and the insistence that it is all about being properly saved. As one Catholic website puts it: “the Bible does not teach salvation by faith alone (Rom. 2:6-13, 1 Cor. 13:2, 13, John 15:9-13, Matt. 19:16-17, Jas. 2:17-26); it teaches faith must “work in love” (Gal. 5:6) if it is a real, active, and living faith.”
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I think most Christians find a good balance between faith and works.
Those who are doing their best to secularise the church are trying to tip the scales towards works without beliefs, but as Michael Wakelin rightly said, the secular world are already doing it, probably better than we are, as they are more street-wise.
I just don’t get why they still want to call it church? Why not just disassociate themselves completely with all things religious and set up their own ‘goodwill society’ or ‘volunteer recruitment agency’ or whatever they want to be known as.
It reminds me of a certain member of the Royal Family who bit the hand that fed him so well all his life, trashed all that they stand for, but won’t give up the titles.
As for the Good Samaritan, I’m sticking with St Bede’s version, thanks all the same!
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